Thu 10 May 2012
The Food Revolution is Not a Big Fat Lie
Posted by Tammi Jonas under agriculture, ethical, farming, food, local, sustainable
[7] Comments
The following is the speech I gave as the final speaker for the negative at a debate last week at the Lake House, ‘The Food Revolution is a Big Fat Lie’. On my team were Necia Wilden and Michael Harden – on the affirmative there were Dani Valent, Janne Appelgren and Richard Cornish. It was a rousing debate followed by a predictably delicious country-style meal put on by our host, the wonderful doyenne of the Daylesford Macedon region Alla Wolf-Tasker.
Of course we won, because of course the current food revolution is no lie, though there is a lot of work ahead…
***
Comrades and colleagues, I’d like to continue the excellent work of my fellow revolutionaries here on the opposition, and tell you a bit more about this revolution that is everywhere, and that we must win lest we abandon our children’s hope for a future.
Let’s start with the children. 20 years ago, chef Alice Waters in California said: “What we are calling for is a revolution in public education – a Delicious Revolution. When the hearts and minds of our children are captured by a school lunch curriculum, enriched with experience in the garden, sustainability will become the lens through which they see the world.”
As Necia has already mentioned, here we have Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden Foundation – and Waters’ and Alexanders’ efforts are certainly not restricted to the middle class – Waters’ program started in the disadvantaged schools of Oakland, California, and Alexanders’ took root in inner-city Collingwood, and has now spread as far as the remote communities of Bourke and Coober Pedy.
The international Via Campesina peasant movement has been around for 20 years and is still gaining momentum. Currently they’re uniting to fight against land grabbing by the World Bank and Wall Street in countries as diverse as Honduras, Mali, Italy and Indonesia.
In India, Vandana Shiva’s work over the past two decades is legion. “I don’t want to live in a world where five giant companies control our health and our food,” said Shiva, and so she started a food revolution in India in 1993. Shiva’s foundation, Navdanya, trains farmers in seed saving and sustainable agriculture.
She cites the peasant prayer:
“Let the seed be exhaustless, let it never get exhausted, let it bring forth seed next year.”
More recently, the Occupy movement was quickly adopted by the food revolution in a spin off called Occupy Big Food, which has drawn support from activists and celebrities as diverse as Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Willie Nelson, and Woody Harrelson. There’s also Millions Against Monsanto and Occupy Monsanto, to follow on from Michael’s point about resistance against the GM food giant.
Back home in Australia, we call Coles and Woolworths ‘ColeWorths’ or ‘the duopoly’, because in naming their power we begin to contest it. Just last week the WAFarmers passed a motion: “That due to Coles’ predatory pricing policy, WAFarmers encourages their members and the wider farming community in general, to boycott Coles supermarkets and all Wesfarmers subsidiaries…”
And if you need more evidence that Australian farmers are part of the food revolution, there are now 44 Australian free-range pig farms listed on the Flavour Crusader blog – five years ago you could have counted us on one hand.
But it’s not just activists, farmers, and academics who’ve joined the food revolution. In 2008 the United Nations appointed a Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, who has proven to be a stunning global leader of the food revolution, saying that:
“Our food systems are making people sick. We should not simply invest our hopes in medicalizing our diets with enriched products, or changing people’s choices through health warnings. We need ambitious, targeted nutrition strategies to protect the right to adequate food, and such strategies will only work if the food systems underpinning them are put right.”
Tonight as we dine here in Daylesford, our comrades in Puerto Rico are hosting the ‘First Agro-Ecological Cocktail’: bringing “ecological farmers, chefs, organic food restaurants, nonprofit organizations, and consumers [to] join efforts in Puerto Rico to formally present what has been done by the agro-ecologic movement in the last 20 years with regards to the conservation of our native seeds, and support the principle of Agricultural Sustainability.”
I ask you, fair denizens of Australia, will you join the cynics and defeatists, and give up all hope of a future in which our grandchildren can still grow and eat clean, fair food, or will you join us in this very real and happening food revolution that is today everywhere just gaining momentum?
Please, raise a glass of red to our distant comrades around the world.
Viva la revolucion!
Related posts:
- An ethical approach to food
- The 18th International Ethnological Food Research Conference
- National Sustainable Food Summit 2011
- Boycott Coles & Woolworths and Drink *Real* Milk
- On milk, farming, and life
Nice one Tam-wish I could have listened to that debate live!
On the duopoly, I find it hard to reconcile the fact that some celebrity chefs who have spend their careers championing good products and food to then endorse a system that not only rips off producers but does relatively little to promote a culture of informed consuming. I’d like to know if the duopoly supplies the restaurants of said celebrity endorsees?
If its good enough to spruik to the rest of the populace surely its good enough to supply their businesses?
Thanks for posting this Tammi. John Lethlean (@johnandnecia) posted some Audio of Necia and Michael’s pieces.
I hope someone has thought of recording it all and maybe popping it up as a TedEX somewhere?
Would love to hear the spirit of the debate.
Steve, I am so with you, as you know. Perhaps we should ask them? Maybe one of the food journalists on the twitterz would like to interview them and ask exactly those questions?
Thanks, Suzanne – where did John post the audio? It was all recorded, and Alla told me it will be up on the Daylesford Macedon Produce Harvest Festival website. I’ll be sure to share when it is. It was a very spirited debate, complete with a highly entertaining tantrum from Cornish.
Well said, Tammi. I’ll bet it was a great debate. Will keep my ears open for the audio.
Great work Tammi,
(This is my first comment, but i’ve been reading your thoughts for a while.)
Has anyone done an article on the debate at all? Sounds like a great idea, i’d love to see more of this happening! Should you need anyone to film etc, i’d be more than happy to.
It’d make a great piece of video. I’ve been following a bunch of people around Melbourne as they try to raise awareness about community gardening and permaculture principles. I’ve been filming a lot of profile pieces, education days, and interviews as part of a project i’ve pulled together while i’ve done my Masters in Journalism over the last year and a half.
Keep it up!
Tom
@heavythesky
Hello Tammi
A late response … I am also cynical of people like Stephanie taking the “means justifies the end” argument by appearing on the duopolies television advertorials sorry I mean “educational food programs that get the young involved with food”.
There is little real debate amongst the foodies as power still lies with the major media that will simply not engage in the debate beyond cosy motherhood positions that are at best pluralist [to be polite]